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Canada got the last hurrah at the Celebration of Light Saturday evening, closing the three-night event with a winning display. Canada was declared the winner of the event, with Brazil and China finishing second and third, respectively.

Cayo: Motherhood can be short-lived in Niger

Being a mom in Canada has its challenges but in poverty-stricken subSahara Africa, it’s a challenge just to live through the experience

Michael Bisceglie

Canada’s is a less-than-stellar performer when it comes to a new ranking of the best places in the world to be a mother.

Our country didn’t quite make the top 10 per cent. We rose a mere one notch above last year’s 20th-place finish in Save the Children’s annual assessment, still trailing top-ranked Norway and 17 other developed countries, most of them in Northern Europe.

But if Canada falls somewhat short of the top of this list, we are nonetheless a long, long way from the bottom.

The low rung on the ladder is occupied by Niger, a poverty-wracked country in the vast, dry African Sahel region just south of the Sahara Desert. This is the place that ranks second-last on the UN Development Program’s index of quality of life. It has the world’s second-highest infant mortality rate with one child in nine dying before their first birthday. Its pregnant women or new mothers are 63 times more likely to die than their Canadian counterparts, and because they have an average of 7.5 children each — the highest fertility rate on earth — the odds of an early death related to child-bearing are compounded sharply.

When you drill down into the reasons why Norway scored better than Canada, only one — that three infants die per 1,000 live births there vs. six here — is of such a life-and-death nature. It’s also worth noting that, the tragedy of each and every one of these lost children notwithstanding, the Canadian figure is still good by the standards of the world, where the median number is about 16. Or by the standards of Niger, where the number is 110.

All other shortfalls that drag down Canada’s score have to do with a whole other realm of concerns that scarcely register in countries where the masses must struggle daily just to survive. Canada has fewer women in Parliament than do the Norwegians, we’ve made less progress (though ours is still substantial) in raising women’s educational levels and economic success, we have lesser maternity and parental benefits — that sort of thing.

I recognize such things matter and deserve to be addressed. But I also believe the significance of any one of them pales in comparison to the more visceral issues, like difference in death rates between those of us in the rich world and those in the poor.

The Save the Children report chronicles many other tragic consequences for at-risk mothers and their children not only in Niger, but in all the many countries where millions don’t get decent education or health care, or even enough to eat. And it zeros in on the importance of nutrition during a child’s first 1,000 days.

This is a challenge even in starting-to-prosper countries like India, which still have many millions of citizens whose lives are untouched by progress. It’s even more acute in much of subSahara Africa, especially the more than half a dozen countries of the Sahel, as well as those in the Horn of Africa to east, all of which are experiencing a food crisis that threatens to grow into yet another famine.

“In some countries, half of all children are chronically undernourished or ‘stunted,’ ” the report notes. “Undernutrition is an underlying killer of more than 2.6 million children and more than 100,000 mothers every year.”

Stunting starts even before birth, and it’s lifelong consequences — for those who survive — include irreversible damage to both their bodies and their minds. As children and later as adults, they lack energy, they often can’t capitalize on what few educational or economic opportunities may come their way, and they struggle with chronic health issues. Of course, half of these children — that is, the girls — will have babies of their own, often in their teen years when their bodies aren’t fully ready for motherhood. And thus — unless ways are found to break the cycle — it will continue and the problems will compound.

I intend to travel to Niger later this month so I can give Vancouver Sun readers a first-hand report on some of these problems and what’s being done to try to ease them. Looking at the work being done there by Save the Children is high up on my to-do list.